[Foundation-l] [announcement] new staff member in business development

[Pierre Beaudouin]

Anthony a écrit :
> On 5/20/07, Florence Devouard <Anthere9 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Anthony wrote:
>>> On 5/19/07, Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:
>>>> Hello,
>>>>
>>>> Anthony a écrit :
>>>> (...)
>>>>> But I think the main issue has nothing to do with the IRS.  It's a
>>>>> matter of focus.  Developing a profitable business competes with the
>>>>> maximum production and distribution of content.  Charging maximum
>>>>> prices for data feeds reduces the dissemination of the data.  Charging
>>>>> licensing fees to DVD distributors raises the prices of the DVDs and
>>>>> thus reduces the number of DVDs which are distributed.  Etc, etc (*).
>>>> I think this is false, because we deal with digital and free content.
>>>>
>>>> It is not because you sell a datafeed to one organisation at one prize
>>>> that you sell it to everybody at the same price. Same logic for DVDs.
>>>>
>>> Interesting.  I don't think that would be feasible for datafeeds
>>> though, and I'm pretty sure it isn't feasible for DVDs.  In the case
>>> of DVDs, if you tried to sell them to different groups for different
>>> prices, you'd simply see people resell the DVDs (engage in arbitrage).
>> Reselling one or two DVD would not be a big deal.
>> However, engaging into a real reselling activity of a DVD using
>> trademarks which you are not authorized to use for a commercial
>> activity, is illegal.
>>
> Umm, how so?  Check out eBay sometime, or half.com (have they gotten
> rid of that yet?).  People resell DVDs using trademarks which they
> aren't authorized to use for a commercial activity *all the time*.
> Besides that, it's most certainly not illegal.
> 
>>>  I think this would happen for datafeeds as well, if they were ever
>>> accessible to the regular public.  If I as an individual could buy an
>>> en.wikipedia datafeed for $100/month (which would probably be more
>>> than enough to cover WMF's actual costs), the WMF wouldn't be able to
>>> charge companies $5000/month, because if they did I'd just step in and
>>> resell my $100/month datafeed for much less than $5000.
>> Yeah, and since your contract agreement at $100 explicitely does not
>> allow you to resell the feed to a third party, you would engage into
>> illegal activity as well.
>>
> Then you could sue me, and I'd countersue you for violating the GFDL.
> What part of "add no other conditions whatsoever to those of this
> License" don't you understand?
> 
> If you're currently forcing datafeed recipients to agree not to
> redistribute the data they receive, then you're in major breach of the
> GFDL.  Not just the relatively minor breaches that have been going on
> for so long, but you've subverting the very essence of copyleft.
> 
> I seriously hope your current contracts don't do that.
> 
>>> And I think the WMF *should* be willing to sell unrestricted datafeeds
>>> to *anyone* for little more than its actual costs.  This is in line
>>> with maximizing the useful distribution of free content, which is
>>> after all the purpose of the WMF.
>> Datafeed is one of the way we can make money. Which will allow us to pay
>> the accountant.
>> Which will allow us to provide all the financial information you are
>> noisily requesting.
> 
> The millions of dollars in donations you've collected is another way
> to pay an accountant.
> 

To be constructive, do you have some ideas to collect more money ? What
should be change during the next fundraising ?

- Should we develop some banners
(http://www2.redcross.org/psa/bannerorder/all/) and ask bloggers and
site owners to add donation ads to websites ?
- Should we do like Firefox (http://www.firefoxgotyourback.com/), but
ask people to pay to "be a pixel" ;)


>> If you count in "actual cost" uniquely the bandwidth cost, $100 could
>> make it. But running an organization uniquely counting as cost, the
>> bandwidth, is seriously being out of it.
>>
> The organization is going to be run regardless of whether or not the
> datafeed is given.  Counting all the costs of running the organization
> when calculating the marginal cost of providing a datafeed, is
> seriously being out of it.
> 
> Anthony
> 

Pierre
-- 
Pierre Beaudouin
Président de Wikimédia France
http://www.wikimedia.fr